Four boys, their mom, and her cello . . . and now a little sister!

I see that I have written one post in the last month. So much for my commitment to blog more often . . .

Here’s what’s up with us:

We’ve decided to sell our house!

Technically, we decided to sell it about two years ago, but then there was shoulder surgery, morning sickness, a new baby, and spending what felt like every available moment getting the house ready to sell. Every deadline we set for ourselves, we neglected to meet for one reason or another, but (over two years later) we finally put a “For Sale By Owner” sign in our front yard. And then got a hundred and one calls from realtors trying to convince us why we really shouldn’t do it ourselves and should hire them instead. Talk about pushy. I’ve quit answering the phone. Which might not be the best strategy if we want to talk to potential buyers. But there’s only so much I can handle in a day since Little A’s been teething and I’ve had a good night’s sleep maybe three times in the past six weeks.

Anyway, we do have a realtor we’ve worked with for a long time and do intend to list it with him in six weeks or so if we don’t sell it on our own. And there are various reasons we’re doing it this way that I don’t want to rehash yet again. Suffice it to say we know what we’re doing and why.

I have to laugh though. Some of them ask why we’re looking to sell such a cute little bungalow in such a great area! Basically because I’m living here with essentially two bedrooms, one bathroom, a yard the size of a postage stamp, and five children. And I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE! I’m at the end of my rope.

I wrote a much more detailed angst-ridden post two Januarys ago. (If I weren’t so exhausted at the moment, I’d find the link.) The way I was feeling then has been compounded by two more years living here plus the addition of one more (terribly cute and adorable and we wouldn’t trade her for anything) little person.

Not to mention school.

I’ve not been blogging about school lately because school has been so disrupted this entire year. Yes, we’ve been intending to list the house since the school year started. I don’t know why we haven’t been able to get it done. We’ve taken off so much time to “work on the house” that as A says, “We’ll have to school through August to finish everything.” That might be the optimistic view of things. Even when we’re having a good day of school, I am so consumed with everything else in my head, that I’m not feeling very effective at all. We need to move simply so I can clear out some space in my brain and get back to where homeschooling takes up most of that space.

My parents said they saw our online ad and could hardly recognize our house. It’s actually really nice to have it so clean, as long as I don’t think about the boxes and boxes of books, puzzles, games, and other nice things we like to spend our time on that have been packed away in a storage unit for, well, years now. We have gotten rid of so much stuff, stuff that really did need to go, but I am not a minimalist at heart and I cannot wait to get into a bigger house and be able to have space to keep the things we really do want to keep.

For posterity’s sake, here’s what the house kind of, sort of looks like. No, can look like if we had no hobbies and very little personality. Yes, we took these pictures, then put all the junk back. No seriously, there was very little clutter to put back, and we’re doing a really great job at keeping it looking this nice, except that all seven of us have been sick with something in the past two weeks (currently, pink eye is making the rounds.)

And yes, I know professional photos would be even better, but it is what it is for now. We just had to get some photos out there to go with our sign.

This is a quirky house. I love it, but it’s quirky. It was built in 1896, then added on to in the 1950s and bricked in. The basement was dug out by hand and we had quite the job updating the plumbing, electrical, and every wall and floor in the place. The kitchen was especially fun, what with 12 layers of wallpaper to scrape off the walls. Oh, the stories I could tell.

Let’s settle for pictures.

Bedroom 2: bunk bed, trundle, and another mattress that comes out at night.

Bedroom 1: Where the other three of us sleep. I cannot wait for Little A to get her own room. And the couch. It really needs a new home too.

Bathroom and laundry: Oh, the toilet room. And the laundry room. I can’t wait for the laundry room to not share space with the bathroom, but it beats having the dryer in the kitchen as when we first moved in.

The kitchen: Notice the lovely vintage 50s cabinets. There’s still a roll of the vintage wallpaper in the basement. It’s so ugly!

Living room:

Yes, I like the color blue if you haven’t noticed.

And my favorite: the dining/library (when we had books here)/school/music room. This was the bedroom of the original house, but we’ve always used it as living space, and I haven’t wanted to give that up for another bedroom. We installed the laminate flooring ourselves specifically for good acoustics for my cello. (Carpet sucks up the sound.) It looks so good, I almost want to go practice. (And I should, I have another concert next weekend.)

The boys are obsessed with playing chess lately, probably because this is the first time in forever the chess table has not had a pile of stuff on it. And their other board games are in storage as they frequently remind me, as if I need reminding.

No yard pictures. That’s still a work in progress and we need to tear down an unstable carport structure. Beyond that we’re trying to decide how much more time, money, and effort we want to put into this property. Personally, I’m done. I’m so ready to move on. That’s the other big question: Where are we going? We have no idea. We need to get our equity out of this house and see where we end up financially. Everything else is a big question mark right now. I’m just trying to hold on to that rope!